They’re the spectators filling the stands of the Sudbury Community Arena in Shoresy. They’re the townspeople frolicking around an oversized Christmas tree in Hot Frosty. And they’re the countless aspiring actors subtly filling the screen of Canadian-shot films and TV shows.
“There’s no limit to how this could be used, because films are being done the same all over the world.”
Ilona Smyth
Background Work
They are extras, and as CEO of tech platform Background Work Ilona Smyth tells BetaKit, they are incredibly hard to cast and coordinate.
“Negotiating a very large deal for a lead, versus trying to get 50 people to show up to set as background actors?” Smyth, who has worked as a casting director for over 20 years, asked in an interview earlier this month. “Doing the latter is much harder, and there’s no tool.”
The fully bootstrapped Ottawa company, which only launched last year, has developed a platform for Canadian background actors (meaning, anyone!) to find and land vetted, paid jobs on production sets for companies like Lifetime, Hallmark, and Paramount.
“What we’re trying to change is the perspective of what the background actors’ place is in the work of art of the film,” Smyth said. “They tend to be thought of last.”
Background Work’s tech aims to put extras front and centre. Like many startups, it began as a solution to a problem in a specific niche: an easy, intuitive way for production companies to source extras for Canadian shoots. Smyth, who runs Smyth Casting, connected with her co-founder Saman Raza, who runs a tech consulting firm with her partner Bryan Belanger.
According to Raza, the collaboration was necessary to tie in insights about how Canada’s film industry works with the software know-how to develop an administrative tool that helps actors and production companies.
“We’re in a kind of marriage,” Raza said in an interview. “Ilona’s the artist, and we’re the paintbrush.”
Background Work currently runs on a subscription basis, with prospective extras paying $99 per year to land vetted jobs and access educational resources about the film industry. The information is then shared with casting directors who can access a pool of talent in one place and book the necessary roles. For Shoresy, a comedy series that follows a senior AAA hockey team, the co-founders said, uploading photos and videos through the platform was key to ensuring casting directors were selecting people who could actually skate.
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The platform has booked more than 7,000 people in background roles in this year alone, mainly in Ontario, the co-founders said. Background Work is growing because of its niche, the founders said. Other digital tools exist for casting work, such as CastingBook, but those are only focused on speaking roles rather than the sometimes more logistically difficult background casting.
The company’s freshman year comes at a complex time for Canada’s film industry, which is largely supported by a robust tax credit system. On the one hand, US President Donald Trump’s threats of 100-percent tariffs on movies have created uncertainty. At the same time, Canadian-made streaming shows continue to garner international acclaim, like North of North and Heated Rivalry.
In the future, the company aims to address security concerns for actors and production companies. Extras are often required to upload and share personal information so that companies can claim regional tax credits—a process that Raza says is currently outdated and not equipped with proper data security measures.
Beyond facilitating casting for big hits like Hot Frosty and Shoresy, Background Work is also booking for Michael Cera’s directorial debut starring Pamela Anderson, which started filming in November in Carleton Place, Ont.
The roughly 10-person company has a large upcoming project in Manitoba and aims to expand steadily across Canada, then eventually, the world.
“There’s no limit to how this could be used, because films are being done the same all over the world,” Smyth said.
Feature image courtesy Bell Media.