Turns out mine is a plugin issue because the footage was shot on a Sony camera. I’m posting my fix here for anyone experiencing the same issue.
I went to the following link and downloaded Sony software for exporting the footage:
It’s a clip browser that imported the footage, exported it and then I added it to my FCP timeline.
The next thing I’ll try is downloading this FCP-specific plugin:
http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/pdzk-lt2
Either way it’s nice to have a solution. 
