Not really. Just play around. I drew the background in a painting/photo editing program as two separate images, then used the clock wipe transition to move back and forth between them. The digits are generated text in VideoFactory. Some Film effects were added to make it look old.
I don't have instructions, but I have posted a .vf project file of a generated countdown on my ftp server.
ftp://ftp.discdude.net/VideoFactory/countdown.zip
I threw this together quickly so it looks ugly, but it should give you a couple of ideas. You can use the "Film Effect" FX to give an old time look, etc.
It's missing the beeps, but you can add that quite easily by generating 1 kHz tones in an appropriate audio editor.
I'll take feedback and questions, so feel free to bug me.