sony camcorder and my mac :(

ok so every year the all the highschoolers at my school go on a retreat to the mountains for a few days. a few weeks before the trip, theres an assembly to get people pumped for the trip and theres always the same video shown. The administration approached me and asked me to make a new video to show off. I consider myself to be pretty knowledgeable in tech stuff but i can easily say photography and video editing stuff is not my strong suit. seeing this as an opportunity to practice that stuff i said sure to the request. i was given a sony camcorder....i cant remember the model number.....it was red, had a hard drive aaaaaand thats pretty much it. anywho when i got back and tried to upload the videos to my mac nothing worked. i went on the net to try and find some answers but i didnt understand any of them. what i do understand is sony camcorders shoot in some format that doesnt play nice with macs. could you guys help me in fixing this problem? PLEASE!!!! thank you