It's 9:30 on a week day morning and Dale Brooks of On Set Glass has been up since 5 a.m. attending to three film sets.

Brooks is a glass man in the movie business. It's his job to install glass that stunt men can safely jump through, to replace tinted glass windows with clear glass so the camera can shoot clear images of the actors inside and to make sure that on-set glass is gimbaled or tilted so it doesn't create a glare.

It's hardly glamorous but Brooks is a classy guy when it comes to glass.

His offices are tucked into an obscure a strip mall in Burnaby, but his company has given him a window on the world. He and his business partner, Perry Shaw, are so devoted to putting the perfect sheen on the movie business here, they have travelled to places like Germany, Costa Rica and China in search of suppliers who provide just the right stuff.

The pair have pulled off feats of magic on movie sets. For Catwoman, they had to build a glass rooftop strong enough to hold humans fighting. In Thirteen Ghosts, they had to be build a glass house.

In business for 10 years, Brooks said he has worked hard to build up a network of suppliers he knows he can count on. In the movie business, there is no room for delays or errors.

He singles out a local company called Garibaldi for its reliability and expertise in producing tempered glass that shatters into tiny cubes rather than shards when it is broken. That way, stunt people don't get hurt. Another supplier, Metro Aluminum, has been fantastic at building the frames.

"Over the 10 years, I have persuaded people to get things done fast," Brooks said. And "my staff is incredible. It has taken me 10 years to find the right guys to do our work."

The hours are long, the work is hard, the dedication solid. Brooks' only vacation is 10 days at Christmas.

The work is a constant juggling act with the need to supply glass for several shows running at once in town.

"It's something different every day. We get to come up with new ideas on how to do things. The people in the industry are great to work with."

Brooks sometimes has to jump through hoops to get the job done. For a show called Are We Done Yet, he had to put clear glass in a number of Escalade Cadillacs. He ordered it from his supplier in China, had it flown to the Vancouver airport, it arrived at noon on a Sunday and he had hired customs officers and shippers and receivers to release it. It was installed that afternoon and the cars were ready to go on set Monday morning.

"There is no dawdling," Brooks says simply. He makes it sound as though it is all in a day's work which, in fact, it often is.

With the frequent need for repeated takes of the same scene, he and his crew have to have the same panel of glass ready to be blown up several times. Usually, three takes does it. But in the case of a movie called Romeo Must Die, he figures he went through two cases of windshields for a Mercedes for a gunshot scene.

You would never know it, judging by Brooks' low-key demeanour, but On Set Glass is so well known in the industry, it is sometimes called upon to provide glass for movie sets across Canada. A company just outside of Hollywood calls upon it to supply clear glass for vehicles on film sets down there.

Brooks seems to have the system down pat. He watches for films or coni-mercials coming to town, then approaches their vco-ordinators about doing the job. "We try to take the headache away from them when we do a big project. They give us all the blue prints. That is one less thing for them tb worry about."

Meanwhile, he has given his suppliers a head's up so they can be geared up for a big order.

He has met actors such as Robin Williams and Harrison Ford but "we generally like to stay away from them because they arc doing a job and we are doing a job."

Brooks could work in the regular glass business. He sometimes does. But then there are the movies with all that glitter, glass and class.

It is just way more fun.